Christopher C. Harmon, Ph.D.

PROFESSOR
Area of Expertise – Terrorism; Insurgency and Revolutionary Wars; Narcotics and Terrorism; U.S. Foreign Policy, International Relations

Dr. Christopher Harmon came to the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies last June 2014. Graduating summa cum laude in liberal arts at Seattle University, Dr. Harmon went on to doctoral studies, and a dissertation on terrorism in Europe, at Claremont Graduate School. In 1982 he began writing on terrorism issues and has for thirty years been publishing and teaching in the fields of terrorism, revolutionary warfare, and counterterrorism. Lecturing widely throughout the USA, he has been invited to speak to a congressional committee, the Department of State, a dozen foreign countries, and headquarters of Interpol in Lyon, France.

For three recent years, Dr. Harmon directed academics in the counterterrorism program of the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies. Earlier he was Legislative Aide for Foreign Policy on a congressional staff, taught for four years on the Strategy & Policy faculty of the Naval War College, and then served at length as a professor of international relations at the Marines’ Command & Staff College in Virginia. From 2005 to 2007 Dr. Harmon held an endowed chair for insurgency & terrorism studies at Marine Corps University. He held another chair there, 2010 to 2014, researching low intensity conflicts in Asia and writing A Citizen’s Guide to Terrorism and Counterterrorism (Routledge).

Dr. Harmon has edited or written five books: two deal with dimensions of grand strategy, and there are two editions of his graduate-level text Terrorism Today (2000; 2007). He has done articles for ORBIS, the geopolitics journal, as well as a 2010 essay in the Strategic Studies Quarterly on his leading research topic of more than a decade, “how terrorist groups end.” For per Concordiam he wrote on the linkages between terrorists and narcotics traffickers—both state and sub-state actors.

Dr. Harmon is a member of the board of editorial advisors to the quarterly journal Terrorism and Political Violence, long associated with Britain’s dean of terrorism studies, Paul Wilkinson. In 2014, Oxford Bibliographies (on line) published Harmon’s assessments of the literature on terrorism.